While the Cuban defector broke in with the Oakland A’s, his family endured a harrowing struggle to reach the U.S.

Marooned on a tiny Caribbean island, family members of Oakland A’s star Yoenis Céspedes feared their journey would end right there under a baking sun.

Their effort to follow Céspedes from Cuba to the United States had gone horribly wrong, leaving them abandoned for two days on a strip of sand more than 600 miles southeast of Florida.

The 10 travelers, including a baby, had no water. They had neither food nor shade. They resorted to catching and cooking an iguana and a seagull, with foul results.

As time wore on and dehydration set in, there were hugs and goodbyes. Estela Milanés, Céspedes’ mother, walked away from her huddled loved ones and lay down alone in despair.

Then salvation arrived in the form of a yacht. And the travelers lived on, continuing an odyssey of nearly two years that ultimately reunited them with Céspedes.

The budding baseball star had fled Cuba with these same people, in search of a prosperous life. He had split from the group and made it to America sooner — reaping a financial bounty and excelling on the game’s biggest stage — while his family took a longer and much more difficult route.

Their travels included four countries, six boat rides, two trips to jail, an immigration raid, accusations of human trafficking and a dispute with a Dominican baseball agent.

In the end, the Céspedes family story — told for the first time in The Chronicle — reflects the extraordinary challenges faced by Cuban players who come to the U.S., the stress it puts on their families, and the opportunity that awaits them all.

“Thank God, I’m fine now, at Yoenis’ side,” his mother said through an interpreter. Milanés, 45, who suffers from high blood pressure, said her greatest anxiety now comes when she watches her son play baseball.

“Ten minutes, 15 minutes and I’m fine," she said. “It goes away.”

Yoenis Céspedes listens as his family describes their harrowing journey to the U.S. at his home in the Oakland hills on Friday, May 31, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle)

Céspedes will be on center stage Monday in New York, taking part in Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game festivities at Citi Field. His hitting prowess will make him a contender to win the sport’s annual home run hitting contest.

And the friends and family members who fled with him from Cuba will also be in New York. Céspedes, 27, is chartering a jet to fly them in from Miami — quite a contrast from their harrowing travels the previous two years.

A young star

Céspedes was born to play baseball. His father, Cresencio Céspedes, was a former Cuban League catcher who separated from Milanés around the time his son turned 1. Milanés was a star softball pitcher for the national team whose extended family helped raise her only son as she traveled to tournaments.

She made Céspedes his first bat out of a tree branch, polishing it with glass. She was his first coach. Even today, Céspedes calls her for hitting tips.

By the time he was 10, the boy’s talent was so apparent that he was sent to a state-run school 50 miles from home. But he did not dream of playing in the major leagues. “Cuba doesn’t really give you the possibility of playing in the big leagues,” he said.

Céspedes played eight seasons in the Cuban winter league, but his big splash came at the World Baseball Classic in 2009, when he hit .458 in six games. The performance should have ensured him prominence on the national squad, yet for some reason he fell out of favor in 2011, much as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ new Cuban star, Yasiel Puig, did a year later.

Céspedes wanted to quit after he was assigned to Cuba’s third team for a tournament in Venezuela.

“I told them that I wanted to play on the first two teams and if not, I’m not going play,” Céspedes said. “I told my mother, and she told me not to stop playing like that. That I should go on the trip to Venezuela. And that when I got back, if I wanted to, we’d take a boat and leave.”

“I only said those words so he wouldn’t stop playing baseball,” Milanés explained. “I never thought about it seriously. But he took it seriously.”

The defection

Céspedes had been approached for a couple of years by Cuban fixers for Latin American baseball agents, commonly known as buscons. Céspedes would tell the fixers, “I’m never going to leave.”

But things changed after his national team snub, and he said he soon connected with Edgar Mercedes, a well-known agent in the Dominican Republic. Thus began a series of steps in the journey — few of which went smoothly.

Yoenis Céspedes listens as his mother Estela Milanés describes the family's harrowing departure from Cuba and the year and a half they spent tryhing to join Yoenis in the U.S. Also pictured are Yoenis's cousin Raylianis Charón, lower right, and Mariela Garcia (wife of a cousin) upper left. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle)

In the summer of 2011, the family prepared to bolt, renting a house on the coast, but Milanés and several others were apprehended on a beach. Céspedes was in a separate car and watched the arrests, then slept in the car that night. His mother was held for four days.

“They asked me about him,” Milanés said of her son. “Supposedly, I didn’t know what he was up to. I told them he had left for training.”

Two days later, in a freak driving accident, Céspedes struck a bicyclist who crossed in front of him. The cyclist died of a heart attack hours later, Céspedes said, but police ruled he was not at fault.

The incident did provide Céspedes an excuse for not being in training. When he spoke to baseball officials, he said, “I told them that because this accident happened, I couldn’t get my head around training.”

A week later, Céspedes and six others were off on a 23-hour boat ride to the Dominican Republic.

Free agency

Céspedes’ departure prompted interrogations of his relatives in Cuba, they said, and one was jailed for three days. Later, three of them left in a second boat.

In the Dominican Republic, the future looked bright. If a Cuban baseball player defects straight to the U.S., he becomes eligible for the major-league baseball draft. But a player who establishes residency elsewhere can become a free agent. And that’s where the riches lie.

Mercedes, the agent, set up the family with a place to live in the city of Santiago, put Céspedes in training and paid him $3,500 a month.

He stoked interest in his client with “The Showcase,” a YouTube video that called Céspedes a historic talent and showed him swatting home runs, sprinting shirtless and bench-pressing 350 pounds. Major-league scouts arrived in droves.

Céspedes established residency in the Dominican in January 2012. A month later, the A’s signed him to a $36 million, four-year contract, the biggest ever for a Cuban defector. Granted a visa as an athlete, he was in Arizona for spring training by March.

But Céspedes could not extend visas to his relatives, who would have to apply and wait. Complicating matters, Céspedes and Mercedes entered into a bitter feud over how much of the A’s contract the agent should receive.

As the 2012 big-league season began, Mercedes called a news conference to say Céspedes “stopped taking our calls.” Céspedes said he had always planned to pay what he owed.

The dispute ended this year with a Dominican court ordering Céspedes to pay 22 percent of the contract, though Céspedes said he successfully argued that the fee should be calculated after taxes.

Mercedes — who did not return telephone messages from The Chronicle — never spoke to Milanés and the other family members during the dispute, but they said they felt threatened by him and feared he would use their immigration status as leverage.

They moved three hours away from Santiago to the city of La Romana, where they felt safer. The group now numbered 10 after one of Céspedes’ cousins had a baby girl, naming her Yaenis.

At one point, Milanés said, she received a bogus immigration letter at her home, threatening deportation. “I was afraid they would deport us back to Cuba,” Milanés said. “God knows what would have happened to us if we had stayed.”

Yoenis Céspedes kisses his cousin's daughter, Yaenis Charón, at his home in the Oakland hills on May 31, 2013. The family was finally reunited after they spent nearly a year and a half apart while Céspedes' mother and cousins struggled to arrive from Cuba. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle)

Once again, the Céspedes family decided their best course was the sea.

With Céspedes now playing for Oakland, the group slipped away in August 2012 and headed for Turks and Caicos, a British island territory 600 miles southeast of Miami, long known as a way station for fleeing Cubans and Haitians.

The trip on a small boat, Céspedes said, was one of several moves arranged by friends in Miami and elsewhere — allies he declined to name.

The voyage lasted 12 hours and ended short. At 6 a.m., the two drivers stopped at an uninhabited islet, little more than a patch of sand much smaller than a baseball field, due to rough seas and fear of a helicopter flying overhead.

The drivers refused to press on. But their passengers did not want to turn back, figuring they would be rescued soon enough. So they disembarked, with the drivers promising to call for help when they returned to the Dominican.

Céspedes’ relatives had a half dozen small water bottles and larger containers of water and formula for Yaenis, who was 6 months old. They made a tent from a tarp left by the boat drivers and shaded the baby beneath it.

When they got hot, they dipped in the water. At night, to fight the cold, they lit a fire. And they huddled together in the sand to sleep.

That day, Ivan Ortiz, 37, another cousin, caught an iguana, skinned it and grilled it. But it was raw and tough, and no one could stomach it. Ortiz also brought down a seagull with a rock and cooked it, with similar results. The group caught two crabs, with two women digging out a bit of meat for sustenance.

Mostly, they sat, stared at the ocean and waited. And waited.

Out of touch

Back in the U.S., Céspedes was putting together an impressive season that would earn him second place in the voting for American League Rookie of the Year. He would finish with a .292 batting average and 23 homers.

“When I would get to the stadium, I would do my best to forget all these problems and concentrate on the game,” he said. “When I left the stadium, I couldn’t help worrying about it again.”

The days when the family was lost at sea were the worst. He knew his loved ones had been en route to Turks and Caicos when all communication ceased. He was playing on the road at the time, he said, but he was consumed with worry.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “Those three days, I knew nothing.”

After two full days, the men and women on the islet feared they wouldn’t hold on much longer.

“By the third day,” Pérez said, “we had no strength left. We could barely speak. We were hugging each other, praying to God someone would show up.”

And then, at 7 a.m., a yacht sailed up to the key to pick them up — possibly due to the efforts of the drivers who had left them.

Six hours later, they were in Turks and Caicos, where, Milanés said, members of a prominent family stamped their passports and found them a rental home. The plan, they said, was to seek residency and, once again, try to immigrate to the U.S. legally. But their troubles were far from over.

Locked up

On Oct. 2, 2012, Milanés was at the house where they were staying in Turks and Caicos, preparing to watch the A’s playoff-clinching game against Texas. Suddenly, the house was raided and the group was taken into custody as illegal immigrants.

The territory’s Sun newspaper reported that the case began when authorities followed a speed boat from Cuba to a waterfront home. But Céspedes suspects his former agent was involved, saying Mercedes had made trips to Turks and Caicos.

The family now numbered 12, after the arrival of a third boat, this one straight from Cuba. Some of the younger members of the group, along with their mothers, were soon released, but the rest were held for 103 days in a detention center as officials investigated what they suspected was a human trafficking ring.

The detention center in Providenciales is well-known for its poor conditions, prompting four Cuban inmates to sew their lips together in protest this year.

The group filed for asylum with the United Nations in December, and a month later they were released on $20,000 bond. They were allowed to live on their own while the U.N. refugee agency studied their situation.

George Missick, the family’s attorney in Turks and Caicos, said he believed the asylum application would have been granted. But one day he got a phone call — his clients were gone. They had once again left via boat, this time headed to the U.S.

“It’s all a moot point, I guess,” he said. “That’s probably the ideal location they wanted to get to, in any event.”

Final stop

On March 9, Céspedes’ family members arrived in Miami after a final furtive boat trip — three days aboard a yacht. Cubans who safely reach the U.S. are free to enter and can apply for residency under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act.

“As soon as you set foot on land, your problems are over,” Milanés said of landing on a beach in south Florida. “The nightmare was over.”

Céspedes, overjoyed and relieved, left spring training and flew to meet them two days later, surprising them while they were sleeping. He had not seen his mother for more than a year.

Many friends and relatives remain in Cuba, however. Milanés dreams of the day she can return to her homeland to visit her mother, her brothers and her 4-year-old grandson — Céspedes’ son, also named Yoenis. Milanés proudly shows photos of the little boy, who looks just like his father — and even has a swing just like him.

Asked if it’s tough not to see his child, Céspedes said, “Just imagine.”

He met the boy’s mother when he was 14, they were together for nine years, and they are on good terms. He and his son talk on the phone every two or three days. Céspedes sends him videos of him playing, and when the boy talks to Milanés, he asks, “Did my dad make any home runs?”

“I hope to have him with me someday,” Céspedes said.

In January, Cuba began allowing baseball players and other defectors to return to visit — though only after they are gone for eight years — under reforms brought by President Raul Castro, who succeeded older brother Fidel in 2008.

Milanés and the rest of the family settled in a home in Miami, but they make frequent trips to the Bay Area to see Céspedes and cook him the Cuban food he missed. They have new lives, and Céspedes is clearly proud of the role he played in making it all happen.

“I’m playing the best baseball in the world, and I can help my family in any way I want to,” Céspedes said.

“What can I tell you?” Milanés said. “The best. The best you can imagine.”